The present invention relates generally to computer-based searching and, more particularly, to methods and systems for ordering search results based on a knowledge level of a user performing the search.
Search engines have become the dominant way to access information on the Internet, providing ease of use and accurate results. Typically, search results generated from a search engine comprise a list of URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) of web sites. For example, when a search query is run through a search engine, a user enters some keywords and the search engine returns a list of documents (web sites, PDFs, etc.) as search results. The results are often ranked by determined relevancy, e.g., according to a scoring algorithm of the search engine, and listed in order according to the ranking so that the user is not overwhelmed with the task of having to skim through a myriad of possibly irrelevant matches. However, a user may not be interested in some search results, even those that are scored as highly relevant to the search query, when the search results are within the knowledge level of the user.